Showing titles in Evolution

Sex, after hunger, may be the most powerful motivating force in our lives. It drives us to seek intimate contact with others and to form relationships that may be fleeting or lifelong, blissful or troubled. Yet many mysteries surround sex and sexuality: Why don't we reproduce by virgin birth? Why does so much of our sexual behavior have nothing to do with reproduction? Why isn't everyone heterosexual? How does the brain create sexual arousal? How do sexual kinks develop? Is porn harmful? What is the relationship between sex and love?

Over five million years ago, a group of primates discovered tools. Perhaps it was a large rock, ideal for cracking nuts, or a stick to extract honey from a beehive. Regardless, the future of our planet was changed forever. Slowly, the primate evolved, abandoning the trees for solid ground and four legs for two–and the tools changed with it. Stones were sharpened, then attached to sticks, before stone gave way to bronze, iron, steel.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Bully for Brontosaurus and learn about natural history.

Arsuaga en su máximo esplendor. El primer libro sobre la evolución de la anatomía humana, y que une ciencia y arte. 4.ª edición. Más de 40.000 lectores. En el museo del Prado, un científico recorre con la vista la escultura del Diadúmeno de Policleto; en su anatomía puede leer una historia evolutiva de siete millones de años. En la sala contigua hay otra algo más tardía que muestra la figura desnuda de la Venus del delfín, el canon helenístico de la belleza femenina. El científico aprecia las diferencias entre ambos y se pregunta por su significado.

How did our brains change over the course of evolution, and what did it mean for our ancestors? Why do we behave the way we do today? Evolutionary psychology is the only framework that allows us to fully understand the nuances of humans' motivations, emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. Our bodies have evolved over time, and so too have our brains.

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the...

Columnist and publisher Michael Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents invoke a combination of ad science, political antipathy, and flawed theology in their new brand of creationism. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. Why Darwin Matters is an incisive examination of what is at stake in the debate over evolution.

Over a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species, Darwinian theory is in a "vibrantly healthy state," writes Stephen Jay Gould, its most engaging and illuminating exponent. Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the listener to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

From the moment of creation to the emergence of a planet tailor-made for life, science tells a sacred story: a superintelligent Creator used His mathematical genius to convert lifeless equations into galaxies, planets, and people. His love has been visible throughout the process. Could our journey reflect thousands of random accidents with no divine guidance? Creation delivered impulses that filled the universe with galaxies and stars. Eliminate any one of those blueprints and the universe would have been stillborn.

Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.

How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.

Just over 125,000 years ago, humanity was going extinct until a dramatic shift occurred—Homo sapiens started tracking the tides in order to eat the nearby oysters. Before long, they’d pulled themselves back from the brink of extinction. What saved us during that period of endangerment? The...

The evolutionary path from the original primates to modern man is a long one and has taken many twists and turns, but naturally, as the fossil record grows, scientists gain a more complete understanding of our own mental and physical history in terms of genetics and anatomy. However, the correct order and relationships of the various specimen types are difficult to pin down.

The sixth "mass extinction event" in the history of planet Earth is currently under way, with over two hundred species dying off every day. The cause of this seismic event is also the source of the single biggest threat to human life: our own inventions. But for all our talk about sea levels and biotechnology, do we really know what our future will actually look like? Will our immune systems be attacked by so-called super bugs, always evolving, and more easily spread than ever? Will the disappearance of numerous species cripple the biosphere?

In Strange Bedfellows, David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton look at how biology actually promotes monogamy in some species and how these lessons apply to human beings. An accessible work of science that is relevant to our intimate daily life, Strange Bedfellows will reassure some people, surprise others, and engage everyone.

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking listeners from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

¿De dónde venimos? ¿Quiénes somos? ¿Adónde vamos? A estas preguntas atemporales responde el reconocido genetista Lluís Quintana-Murci, mostrando cómo el incremento del conocimiento obtenido en las pasadas décadas por la genética de poblaciones ha transformado nuestro conocimiento de la especie.

From the big bang to the origin and evolution of intelligent life in a search for the meaning of human existence, Why Are We Here?, by author Bruce Brodie, offers a look at evolution and the future of life on the planet.

An entertaining and enlightening exploration of why waste matters, this cultural history explores an often ignored subject matter and makes a compelling argument for a deeper understanding of human and animal waste. Approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives - evolutionary, ecological, and cultural - this examination shows how integral excrement is to biodiversity, agriculture, public health, food production and distribution, and global ecosystems.